How to Automate Bravo Store Systems

A single Bravo ticket can hold a loan, a buy and a sale

Bravo puts a pawn customer's whole visit on one ticket. Two items pawned, a TV bought and last month's loan renewed go through as one transaction, with one receipt.

Bravo Store Systems makes the software, and most counters just call it Bravo. Steve Mack began writing it for his own pawn business in 1985, and the company now sells it as point-of-sale software for pawnbrokers, FFL gun dealers, jewelers, shooting ranges and consignment shops. The loan book lives on one screen: new loans, renewals, extensions, partial payments, redemptions and forfeitures.

Bravo configures state rules, hold periods, ID checks and firearms compliance per store. It sends police reports daily to services such as LeadsOnline and BWI. For an unfamiliar item, the Estimator walks the clerk through identifying it and grading its condition, then recommends a price from real pawn and retail transactions.

Forfeited pieces and callback notes pile up behind a busy pawn counter

Each forfeited piece needs photos and a price before it goes back out. The manager decides which pieces go online and which go in the case, and the gold chain nobody will pay retail for waits on a call to the refiner. Loan requests started at home in MobilePawn arrive as photos, and the manager has to price each one before the customer drives over.

Requests reach the shop in more places than Bravo. An email asks what the shop would loan on a Rolex. Last week a regular asked to be called if a particular pistol comes in, and the note is on a pad by the register. A customer who used to come in every fortnight has not been seen since spring.

The partners want each store's loans and sales at closing time, and the bookkeeper wants the week in a spreadsheet. Both ask the manager instead of logging in to Bravo, so on a Saturday with a queue at the counter the numbers wait until Monday.

MobilePawn sends loan reminders with nobody at the counter pressing send

MobilePawn, Bravo's customer app, sends free text and push reminders 5, 3 and 1 days before a loan is due and on the due date, and 5 and 1 days before a layaway payment. Customers pay from the app and the payment lands in Bravo. Mobile Messenger adds recurring notices for loans, layaways and pickups.

Review Booster asks customers for reviews and posts the positive ones to Google, Facebook, Yelp and CitySearch, keeping negative feedback private. Bravo discounts aging stock automatically, and an item listed once in Bravo goes out to every connected marketplace and comes down the moment it sells.

The dashboard rolls every store's sales and loan volume into one live view. Bravo also ships more than 36 standard reports, and both show their numbers only to someone signed in. An emailed request stays in the shop's inbox until someone types it into Bravo, and the name on the pad stays on the pad. Whether an aging piece should move to the other store or go to the refiner is still the manager's call.

The day's tickets can reach people who never open Bravo

Each store's loans, buys and sales reach the partners' Slack channel when the doors lock, and last week's totals arrive as new rows in the bookkeeper's spreadsheet by Monday morning.

On Monday the manager opens a Google Sheet of the pieces that have sat longest, each row with the item's cost, current price and days in inventory, and marks every row for a markdown, a transfer to the other store or the refiner.

Each morning the counter has a text ready for every customer whose requested gun or guitar came in the day before. The clerk answering email about a pair of earrings in the case starts from a reply that already gives the price, says whether they are still there and links the listing on the store's website. The manager sends or deletes a brief note to each regular missing since spring, drafted in the shop's email.

The counter keeps every decision that touches a loan or a price

The totals and the aged-stock sheet come straight off Bravo's dashboard and inventory. The callbacks need one change at the counter: requests go on a shared list instead of the pad by the register. WebRun is an AI agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. At close it reads those screens with a Bravo user of its own.

The manager chooses what that user can open, store by store, with the role-based permissions Bravo sets per location. A clerk sends each callback text and email reply after reading it. Before switching on the closing totals or the callback texts, the manager can read every step each job takes.